This invention relates to the flavouring of a milk chocolate.
Milk chocolate is made from a crude chocolate mixture consisting of cocoa powder, cocoa butter, milk and sugar. This mixture is finely ground and the resulting powder is refined and then liquefied by mixing in conches. The liquid chocolate is then tempered and moulded.
In one particular process used at present, which produces a milk chocolate with a caramel, fruity and milky flavour very popular among consumers, the crude chocolate mixture consists of "crumb", sugar and cocoa butter. The crumb is prepared by heat treatment of milk, addition of sugar, concentration in vacuo, mixing of the sweetened concentrated milk and the cocoa and complete drying of the resulting mixture in vacuo, i.e. to a residual moisture content of at most 1.5% by weight. The crumb is in the form of a dark hard mass which is finely ground, introduced into moisture-proof bags and then stored in a dry conditioned atmosphere. This mass keeps for a long time and develops a typical crumb flavour with, in addition, a milky note after several months' storage produced by enzymatic autolipolysis.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 4,081,568, lipolysis can be accelerated and made more constant by adjusting the pH of the crude chocolate mixture to a value of 6.25 to 6.7 by addition of trisodium phosphate before drying.
According to Great Britain Patent Specification 524,466, the butyric note in a fat for flavouring milk chocolate is accentuated by lipolysis of cream by a non-specific lipase followed by separation of the fatty phase which is used as flavouring agent for incorporation in the cocoa butter during production of the chocolate.
Accordingly, it has hitherto been accepted that the elements responsible for flavouring, particularly those formed during ripening of the crumb, were essentially the short chain fatty acids.